Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

AST SpaceMobile has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Verizon to provide direct-to-cellular service from its satellites.

The U.S. State Department has approved a Swedish top-up purchase of Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters.

The Space Force says Boeing and Northrop Grumman are the only bidders qualified to build the next-generation jam-resistant satcom payloads.

Canada’s MDA has taken an ownership stake in Houston-based Voyager Space’s Starlab commercial space station.

NASA received 48 responses to its April 16-May 17 solicitation for alternative ideas to bring samples collected by the Perseverance Mars rover back to Earth.

NASA has cleared Boeing and United Launch Alliance (ULA) to proceed with a June 1 launch attempt of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.

Saab has proposed a Nordic pooling and sharing initiative for the operation of Sweden’s planned future fleet of GlobalEye airborne early warning aircraft.

The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) has confirmed that the Lockheed Martin F-35B that crashed in New Mexico on May 28 was a development test aircraft.

An ongoing study is focusing on reviving the military variant of the former Short Brothers Sherpa utility aircraft for the defense and firefighting markets.

Germany is looking to place a top-up order for Patriot air-and-missile defense systems.

The European Commission has approved up to $1.5 billion in state aid to support development and deployment of a hydrogen value chain for the transport sector.

Canada finalized a contract with the CAE- and KF Aerospace-led SkyAlyne team to modernize the initial fixed-wing and helicopter RCAF pilot training pipeline.

Boeing has bolstered its presence in the UK by opening an office in Bristol, England, focused on its defense business.

German police are investigating a collision between a consumer drone and a German Air Force Eurofighter combat aircraft.

The Center for the Study of Space Crime, Policy and Governance plans to host its initial annual Space Piracy Conference Feb. 11-12, 2025.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has claimed its Chengdu J-20 fighter can reach supercruise.

Sweden will transfer a pair of airborne early warning aircraft to Ukraine in a bid to bolster the country’s air defense and support its future F-16s.

The EarthCARE satellite is designed to determine what role clouds and aerosols play in heating and cooling the atmosphere to better understand climate change.

The development element of focus is the Vasimr’s Generation 4 (Gen-4), or Rhino Horn, radio frequency power source.

Selected U.S. military contracts from the past week.

News in brief.

THALES ALENIA SPACE to build JSAT-31... PRECISION AEROSPACE GROUP secures line of credit... MARINETE MARINE gets $1b guided-missile frigate award...

An aircraft resembling a Lockheed Martin F-35 crashed on May 28 at 2 p.m. local time in New Mexico.

Bell has been named as the second performer under Phase 1B of a DARPA program to build a high-speed vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) X-plane.

The edge computing capability is intended to shorten the time it takes maritime security and defense users to receive SAR observation data.